Old Time Radio Shows

The Wilson-Nesbitt Summer Program is an all-time family favorite. One of my favorite episodes is Elizabeth Woodcock . This was a story of a lady in Massachusetts who was buried in the snow for five days but woke up to tell the tale. From John Nesbitt ’s interesting narration, the audience learned that Ms. Woodcock went with her horse on a snowy day, thinking that the ride outdoors would be short and quick. However, before she reached her house, a blizzard overtook her and she became disoriented and was not able to find her way home fast enough. She fell asleep on the snow and eventually was covered with snow as well. During the entire five days before she was discovered, she woke up to several moments of wakefulness.  The storyteller’s captivating manner of relating the events enabled listeners to feel the cold of the snow during Ms. Woodcock’s ordeal and the warmth of relief at the end when Ms. Woodcock turned up alive. John Nesbitt did not stop at narrating the story...

Instead of ending with a whimper, the Golden Age of Radio went out with a bang. Many of the best network and syndicated shows began in the 1950’s, even after the public interest and advertising dollars shifted to television. FORT LARAMIE   was certainly one of the finest shows on the air at the time. Were it, not for GUNSMOKE , it may have been deemed the best adult Western radio program ever to hit the airwaves. FORT LARAMIE  and GUNSMOKE are closely related. Both shows had many of the same staff members, including the producer-director, writers, sound effects men, and actors.  FORT LARAMIE  was brought to CBS by Norman Macdonnell almost four years after the beginning of his original hit program,  GUNSMOKE   Macdonnell’s newest show was noted for its attention to detail and gritty portrayal of the conditions in the developing west, qualities that also drew audiences to GUNSMOKE . Fort Laramie, Wyoming and Dodge City, Kansas were both real and signif...

When radio's Sherlock Holmes dug into the case at hand, he was as obsessed as a hound-dog on the trail of the scent and as determined as a shark heading towards its quarry. Holmes stuck to it until all possible avenues had been traced. He was a detective’s detective. So what...or rather who created this paragon of detail and pursuit? As a doctor and writer, Sir Doyle prescribed (like that?) his character of  Sherlock Holmes  to stay committed to the task at hand...and find the answer. The unique aspect of England’s leading private detective was he found answers where no one even noticed...or dained to perceive a clue. Holmes was a complex mind that harbored cliches for clues and eloquence for action. The radio audience became entranced by Holmes ability to locate the thread in the bizarre location and the drop of wine that “should not have been there”. America developed a following for the non-Tarzan who was as quick with the wit as he was the reveal of the potential cold...

November 27, 2013: Hanukkah starts tonight at Sundown. Christmas radio shows  were standard broadcasts throughout the  golden age of radio , but listen a rare Hanukkah themed old time radio shows from  Eternal Light   from 1950:

Some of our favorite and most prominent women at the radio microphone as  actors include: Agnes Moorehead - the first lady of SUSPENSE! Mercedes McCambridge Lurene Tuttle  Arlene Francis   Mary Jane Higby  Natalie Park  Virginia Gregg Anne Elstner  Virginia Payne  Mary Margaret McBride: The "Oprah" of her time with the largest radio audience  Ora Nichols: The mother of sound effects. She founded the craft of radio sound effects, although it would eventually become a male-dominated portion of radio  Peg Lynch: The best comedy writer in radio who also starred in her own shows  (Mary) Kathleen Hite: The first woman writer on the CBS westerns who would go on to write nearly all of the "Ft. Laramie" scripts and later, many TV westerns  Betty Mandeville: Directed "The FBI in Peace and War" thus becoming the first woman to direct a crime show in prime time  Ruth Woodman: Creator and writer of " Death Valle...

When we think of a Hard-Boiled Detective , the image that first pops into our heads is none other than Sam Spade . The question is: how accurate is that picture? The answer is both "very" and "not very". It is far from uncommon for a character or even a story to be modified from the original author's vision. This is especially true when a literary character is adapted for other media. What is interesting in  Sam Spade  's  transformation is that the more he is adapted,  the more correct  he feels to the audience. Convention dictates that the  Sam Spade   introduced to us by Dashiell Hammett would be the correct one. Spade seems to be an amalgam of the actual private detectives that Hammett had worked with when he was an investigator. In the introduction, to the 1934 edition of The Maltese Falcon , Hammett writes that the real private detective has no desire "to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a ...

Just as with the Horror Genre , Radio is a superior medium for Science Fiction than TV or Movies. It is not a medium for the lazy Sci Fi fan: the producer couldn't call in the CGI (computer generated image) team and have them created an exploding space cruiser. But for the fan willing to lose himself in his imagination, Radio could make the loneliness of space that much deeper, the burning sands of a distant planet that much bleaker, and the evil of a rogue robot that much more frightening. One of the best Science fiction Anthologies on radio was X Minus One . What made the series great was the stories, which were adapted from the pages of Galaxy Magazine, and later Astounding Science Fiction Magazine. Galaxy had become the leading Science Fiction publisher in the 50's by publishing stories that dealt with social issues and not just technology and monsters. The stories were adapted for radio by NBC staff writers, mostly Ernest Kinoy and Frank Lefferts, who were usually ...